Former TRON CTO Says If Justin Sun ‘Slanders’ Him Again, He Will Fight Back

On Monday (May 13), Lucien (Chinese name: "Zhiqiang") Chen, who claims that he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at TRON Foundation until May 10, said that the accusations levelled against him by Justin Sun were false, and promised to take legal action if the TRON Foundation CEO "slanders" him again.

Lucien Announces His Departure From TRON Foundation

It all started on May 10, when Lucien published a post on the Medium blog for a new blockchain startup called Volume Network, which apparently he has founded recently and where he is currently the CEO.

Here are some of the main points from Lucien's blog post:

Two years ago, he had joined TRON Foundation as CTO. Furthermore, he said that he and Justin were co-founders of TRON.

He was leaving his position at TRON Foundation on May 10, the day that this post was published.

The reason for his departure was to "rebuild a new TRON" and he had decided to call this new blockchain project "Volume Network".

Because of "irreconcilable" differences between him and Justin, today's TRON is not what he had in mind when he first joined the company.

The reasons for his disillusionment are as follows:

Voting in TRON is centralized. To explain what he means, he says that while the "total number of TRX in TRON is 100 billion," the "total number of votes for the super representatives is just less than 8 billion."

"TRON is not associated with the Internet." He is unhappy that the TRON ecosystem is most made up of gambling-related decentralized applications (DApps) and very few "commercial applications."

"TRON has deviated from the spirit and original intention of the blockchain." In short, he feels that while the "spirit of the blockchain" is all about decentralization, almost every aspect of TRON is currently far too centralized.

He wants Volume Network to be "a real community project."

TRON Foundation's Accusations Against Lucien

On May 12, Reddit user "pochacod" posted what he said was an official response that he managed to get from TRON Foundation regarding Lucien's claims; he posted this on a Reddit thread called "Lucien Chen Megathread":

"According to the inspection department of TRON, former employees Z. Chen, J. Zhu, and X. Xie are suspected of misappropriation of funds, bribery, competitive infringement, and theft of trade secrets and intellectual property. Chen, Zhu, and Xie were dismissed in January, 2019 for violation of corporate policies and the law. Relevant documents and materials have been handed over to the judiciary. Z. Chen joined TRON in October, 2017 not as a co-founder but rather a technical leader."

Then, on May 13, Coindesk reported that Justin himself had expressed similar words via his Weibo account. More specifically, the translated text of Justin's post mentions that Lucien ("Z. Chen") was "an ordinary employee on the technical side and was not a co-founder," even though on 2 June 2018, Justin had posted a tweet referring to Lucin as TRON's CTO:

CTO Lucien Chen: “By adopting an enhanced DPoS consensus mechanism - TPoS - #TRON TPS is several hundred times of that of #Ethereum. TRON allows every token holder to participate in democratic elections, where one $TRX equals one vote.” ✌️ pic.twitter.com/5Jn4OxkV8x

PayPal is Cautiously Optimistic About Partnership with Libra Association

Payment platform was one of the first companies to join and support the Libra Association.

Payment platform PayPal is cautiously optimistic about its relationship with Facebook’s digital currency libra, despite being the highest-profile company to join the Libra Association.

PayPal Backs Libra Association

In June, shortly after the official unveiling of Facebook’s libra, PayPal announced an intention to join and support the Libra Association, a collection of tech and finance companies promoting the product.

At the time, PayPal billed the digital currency as a revolutionary product for people around the world,

We believe in democratizing participation in the digital economy for people from all walks of life, and businesses of all sizes.

However, PayPal appears cautious about its future with Facebook’s digital currency. PayPal investor relations vice president Gabrielle Rabinovitch reiterated Sept. 12 that the company is a non-binding agreement with libra,

It's a non-binding commitment. And obviously, I think there's a lot of work to happen before we get to that point where it becomes something more than just a very exciting idea.

She added,

The goals and ambitions of Libra are very consistent with PayPal's overall ambitions in terms of serving the underserved; democratizing access to capital. So we very much believe in the potential of Libra.

While PayPal appears optimistic about the future of libra, the digital currency has endured months of regulatory and political scrutiny concerning its release.

Earlier in the week, senior U.S. Treasury official Sigal Mandelker told an audience in Geneva that libra would be held to the highest standard of regulatory compliance in order to combat money laundering and terrorist funding.